Early metacognitive abilities: The interplay of monitoring and control processes in 5- to 7-year-old children

Do reflection prompts promote children's conflict monitoring and revision of misconceptions?

We tested whether reflection prompts enhance conflict monitoring and facilitate the revision of misconceptions. German children (N = 97, Mage = 7.20, 56% female) were assigned to a prediction or a prediction with reflection condition that included reflection prompts. Children in the prediction with reflection condition (1) showed greater error-related response times and pupil dilation responses, indicating better conflict monitoring, and (2) performed closer to an optimal Bayesian learner, indicating better monitoring-based control. However, by the end of the study, all children had similar levels of misconception revision. Thus, reflection prompts can enhance learning from anomalous evidence by improving conflict monitoring, but they may need to be repeated often to sustain their beneficial effects.

Children's metacognition and cognitive offloading in an immediate memory task

Cognitive offloading is used to supplement internal processing demands through external actions such as writing down information. While metacognition plays a critical role in adults' cognitive offloading decisions, less is known about the relation between metacognition and cognitive offloading in children. Here, we introduced an immediate memory task to 11- to 12-year-olds under two conditions: no choice to offload and choice to offload. Participants made metacognitive judgements about their memory capacity, and the task performance components such as accuracy and effort. Our results revealed that recall accuracy of the to-be-remembered items increased in the choice condition. Interestingly, while there was a consensus amongst participants that they chose to offload to maximise accuracy and reduce effort, there was no relation between offloading behaviour and metacognitions about accuracy and effort. On the other hand, metacognition for memory capacity was related to offloading behaviour. We discuss the implications for further understanding of the relation between cognitive offloading and metacognition in children.

The structure of metacognition in middle childhood: Evidence for a unitary metacognition-for-memory factor

It has been debated whether children's metacognitive monitoring and control processes rely on a general resource or whether metacognitive processes are task specific. Moreover, findings about the extent to which metacognitive processes are related to first-order task performance are mixed. The current study aimed to uncover the relationships among children's monitoring (discrimination between correct and incorrect responses), control (accurate withdrawal of wrong answers), and performance across three memory-based learning tasks: Kanji learning, text comprehension, and secret code learning. All tasks consisted of a study phase, a test phase, monitoring (confidence judgments), and control (maintaining/withdrawing responses). Participants were 325 children (151 second graders [Mage = 8.12 years] and 174 fourth graders [Mage = 10.20 years]). Confirmatory factor analyses showed that a model in which monitoring and control loaded on a joint factor and performance on a separate factor provided the best fit to the data. Fourth graders had better monitoring and control accuracy than second graders. However, the factor structure of metacognition was similar for both age groups, contradictory to the assumption that metacognition generalizes across tasks as children grow older. After accounting for task-specific processes, monitoring and control skills for language-based memory tasks appear to be generalizable in middle childhood. In sum, children's monitoring and control for three separate memory tasks appear to reflect a unitary metacognition-for-memory factor related to, but distinguishable from, performance.

Disagreement reduces overconfidence and prompts exploration in young children

Can the experience of disagreement lead young children to reason in more sophisticated ways? Across two preregistered studies, four- to six-year-old US children (N = 136, 50% female, mixed ethnicities, data collected 2020-2022) experienced either a disagreement or an agreement with a confederate about a causal mechanism after being presented with ambiguous evidence. We measured (1) children's confidence in their belief before and after the (dis)agreement, and (2) how long children searched for information about the correct answer. Disagreement, especially with an expert (Experiment 2), reduced overconfidence and prompted children to search longer for information, compared to agreement. Together, our findings suggest possibilities for interventions aimed at fostering humility and learning across the lifespan.

Age-related differences in the removal of information from working memory

Removal has been assumed to be a core mechanism in working memory. However, it remains unclear whether children can actively remove outdated information from working memory and how this ability develops as children age. The current study aimed to examine age-related differences in removal ability and its relations with cognitive control and working memory capacity. Children aged 7, 9, and 11 years performed a modified working memory updating task assessing removal efficiency. In addition, a battery of cognitive control and working memory capacity tasks was administered. Results indicated that updating response times decreased considerably when a longer time was given for removal, suggesting that children aged 7 to 11 years can actively remove outdated items from working memory prior to encoding the new ones and that removal efficiency increased with age. More important, age-related increases in removal efficiency occurred concurrently with the development of working memory capacity. Proactive control predicted removal efficiency over and beyond age and working memory capacity. The findings shed new light on the mechanisms underlying the development of working memory updating.

Seeking versus receiving help: How children integrate suggestions in memory decisions

The current research examined how seeking versus receiving help affected children's memory and confidence decisions. Baseline performance, when no help was available, was compared to performance when help could be sought (Experiment 1: N = 83, 41 females) or was provided (Experiment 2: N = 84, 44 females) in a sample of predominately White 5-, 7-, and 9-year-olds from Northern California. Data collection occurred from 2018 to 2019. In Experiment 1, 5-year-olds agreed most often with sought-help, whereas 9-year-olds were the only age group reporting lower confidence for sought-help relative to baseline trials. In Experiment 2, agreement and confidence after provided help were similar across age groups. Different developmental patterns when help was sought versus provided underscore the importance of active help-seeking for memory decision-making.

Why is she scratching her head? Children's understanding of others' metacognitive gestures as an indicator of learning

Successful collaborative learning is supported by the coordination of one's own learning with the learning performance of others. One type of cues that guides the understanding of others' learning performances is their metacognitive gestures. In the current study, we investigated (a) whether 3- to 7-year-old children rely on others' gestures to judge someone else's learning progress and likely learning performance (Experiment 1; N = 76), (b) whether metacognitive gesture understanding depends on cognitive and theory of mind skills (Experiment 2; N = 59), and (c) whether this knowledge would influence children's future selective learning and selective teaching choices (Experiment 3; N = 96). Results of Experiment 1 showed that by 3 years of age children can interpret gestures as an indicator of a person's future performance and that this capacity improves with age, with older children differentiating better between the types of gestures. Experiment 2 revealed that the understanding of metacognitive gestures was not modulated by either nonverbal cognitive capacities or theory of mind skills. Experiment 3 showed a developmental difference in that 5- and 7-year-olds, like adults, consistently selected that successful learners should help someone to learn and that ineffective learners should receive help, whereas 3-year-olds selected learners at chance level. Overall, the results support views that children acquire an understanding of metacognitive gestures early in life and that the translation of this knowledge into selective teaching and selective learning choices improves with age.

Goal choice in preschoolers is influenced by context, cognitive flexibility, and metacognition

Introduction

Goal choice is one of the first, and most important, steps in self-regulated learning (SRL). It is particularly challenging for young children (before 5–6 years), who tend to rely on available environmental cues, which makes their goals fragile because of the instability and variability of the environment. Therefore, it can be assumed that the conditions under which a task is performed may influence a child’s learning goal choice. Moreover, adapting to constraints involves control capacities provided by executive functions (EF) and metacognition.

Methods

The main purpose of this study was to determine factors that influence the way preschoolers choose a learning goal during the first step of SRL. We tested whether adding constraints to perform a task may influence the choice of the procedure that a child aims to learn to perform this task. We also examined the role of cognitive flexibility and metacognition in goal selection in the face of these changes, and tested the influence of change over time, comparing participants’ performance at two points in the school year. One hundred 4-year-olds were asked to perform a jigsaw puzzle task under two conditions: predictable vs. unpredictable environmental change. Individual levels of cognitive flexibility and metacognition were also measured.

Results

The results show that only a predictable change, but not an unpredictable one, leaded children to change their learning goals. Furthermore, when participants were faced with an unpredictable change, metacognition and cognitive flexibility significantly predicted learning goal change. Results are discussed regarding the development of SRL, flexibility, and metacognition. Educational suggestions are proposed.

Highlights

– The choice of a learning goal by a preschooler is influenced by the conditions of task performance and environmental cues. Facing a predictable change is more disruptive to children before the age of 4.5, and more likely to cause them to change their goal.

– A shift is observed, from age 4 and during the school year, from a perceptual to a conceptual level of processing.

– Cognitive flexibility and metacognition also determine learning goal choice in preschoolers, but only in front of unpredictable changes.

What about "space" is important for episodic memory?

Early cognitive neuroscientific research revealed that the hippocampus is crucial for spatial navigation in rodents, and for autobiographical episodic memory in humans. Researchers quickly linked these streams to propose that the human hippocampus supports memory through its role in representing space, and research on the link between spatial cognition and episodic memory in humans has proliferated over the past several decades. Different researchers apply the term "spatial" in a variety of contexts, however, and it remains unclear what aspect of space may be critical to memory. Similarly, "episodic" has been defined and tested in different ways. Naturalistic assessment of spatial memory and episodic memory (i.e., episodic autobiographical memory) is required to unify the scale and biological relevance in comparisons of spatial and mnemonic processing. Limitations regarding the translation of rodent to human research, human ontogeny, and inter-individual variability require greater consideration in the interpretation of this literature. In this review, we outline the aspects of space that are (and are not) commonly linked to episodic memory, and then we discuss these dimensions through the lens of individual differences in naturalistic autobiographical memory. Future studies should carefully consider which aspect(s) of space are being linked to memory within the context of naturalistic human cognition. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Memory.

Differential development and trainability of self-regulatory abilities among preschoolers

Self-regulation (SR) as well as self-regulated learning (SRL) show large interindividual variance in preschoolers. This variance may result in differential developmental trajectories. The present study aims to investigate whether a reduction in interindividual differences over time, which could previously be found for preschoolers' SR, is also present for SRL. Furthermore, the present study aims to explore whether preschool SRL training transfers to SR and whether training effects visible in SRL depend on initial performance. A sample of 94 preschoolers participated in this intervention study. Children were assigned to either a training group or to an active control group. Additionally, the sample was divided into high- and low-SRL preschoolers based on pretest SRL performance. Repeated measures ANCOVAs revealed that in the active control group, differences between high- and low-SRL preschoolers decreased over time. The training group showed a greater increase in SRL than the active control group. Training-induced increases did not vary between high- and low-SRL preschoolers. Additionally, increases in SR were identical for training and active control group. Further research on the transferability of preschool SRL training to SR is needed.

Stop and think: Additional time supports monitoring processes in young children

When children evaluate their certainty, monitoring is often inaccurate. Even though young children struggle to estimate their confidence, existing research shows that monitoring skills are developing earlier than expected. Using a paired associates learning task with integrated monitoring, we implemented a time window to—"Stop and Think"—before children generated their answers and evaluated their confidence in the chosen response. Results show that kindergarten and second grade children in the—"Stop and Think"—condition have higher monitoring accuracy than the control group. Implementing a time window thus seems to support children in their evaluation of different certainty levels. Relating individual differences in independently measured inhibitory control skills revealed a correlation between monitoring and inhibition for kindergarteners.

Foundations of intuitive power analyses in children and adults

Decades of research indicate that some of the epistemic practices that support scientific enquiry emerge as part of intuitive reasoning in early childhood. Here, we ask whether adults and young children can use intuitive statistical reasoning and metacognitive strategies to estimate how much information they might need to solve different discrimination problems, suggesting that they have some of the foundations for 'intuitive power analyses'. Across five experiments, both adults (N = 290) and children (N = 48, 6-8 years) were able to precisely represent the relative difficulty of discriminating populations and recognized that larger samples were required for populations with greater overlap. Participants were sensitive to the cost of sampling, as well as the perceptual nature of the stimuli. These findings indicate that both young children and adults metacognitively represent their own ability to make discriminations even in the absence of data, and can use this to guide efficient and effective exploration.

Putting the pieces together: Cognitive correlates of self-derivation of new knowledge in elementary school classrooms

A central goal of development and formal education is to build a knowledge base. Accumulating knowledge relies, in part, on self-derivation of new semantic knowledge via integration of separate yet related learning episodes. Previous tests of self-derivation evidence both age-related and significant individual variability in self-derivation performance in the laboratory and the classroom due in part to individual differences in verbal comprehension (children and adults) and working memory (adults only). In the only extant investigation of cognitive correlates of children's successful self-derivation in the classroom, 3rd graders' verbal comprehension predicted self-derivation, whereas working memory did not. In the current research, we expanded the battery of cognitive correlates investigated, the age range of participants (8-11 years), and the sample size (N = 330) to examine candidate sources of variability in self-derivation. More specifically, in a diverse sample, we measured children's auditory and spatial working memory, inhibitory control, metacognitive awareness, verbal comprehension, and metacognitive judgments at test for self-derivation. Metacognition was of particular interest in the current research because little is currently known about how children's understanding of their cognition, at the trait or item-specific level, may affect their derivation of new knowledge. Only verbal comprehension and metacognitive knowledge predicted children's self-derivation performance; children's metacognitive judgments at the time of testing for self-derivation were not related to their performance. These findings suggest that having both semantic knowledge and knowledge of one's self as a learner, as well as knowing how to use one's knowledge, support further knowledge base development.

Young children spontaneously devise an optimal external solution to a cognitive problem

Metacognition plays an essential role in adults' cognitive offloading decisions. Despite possessing basic metacognitive capacities, however, preschool-aged children often fail to offload effectively. Here, we introduced 3- to 5-year-olds to a novel search task in which they were unlikely to perform optimally across trials without setting external reminders about the location of a target. Children watched as an experimenter first hid a target in one of three identical opaque containers. The containers were then shuffled out of view before children had to guess where the target was hidden. In the test phase, children could perform perfectly by simply placing a marker in a transparent jar attached to the target container prior to shuffling, and then later selecting the marked container. Children of all ages used this external strategy above chance levels if they had seen it demonstrated to them, but only the 4- and 5-year-olds independently devised the strategy to improve their future performance. These results suggest that, when necessary for optimal performance, even 4- and 5-year-olds can use metacognitive knowledge about their own future uncertainty to deploy effective external solutions.

Connecting teachers' classroom instructions with children's metacognition and learning in elementary school

Many children have difficulties with accurate self-monitoring and effective regulation of study, and this may cause them to miss learning opportunities. In the classroom, teachers play a key role in supporting children with metacognition and learning. The present study aimed to acquire insights into how teachers' cognitive and metacognitive strategy instruction, as well as teacher-directed and child-centered instructional practices are related to children's self-monitoring accuracy, regulation of study, and learning performance. Twenty-one teachers and 308 children (2nd and 4th grade elementary school) participated. Teachers instructed a secret code task, children had to learn the match between letters of the alphabet and corresponding symbols. Teachers were observed and audio-recordings were made of their instructions. Then, children were asked to (a) make restudy selections, (b) complete a test, and (c) self-monitor test performance. Although teachers both addressed cognitive and metacognitive strategies, they more often instructed children about cognitive strategies. Further, teaching practices were more often teacher-directed than child-centered. Although there were no relations between teachers' instructions for metacognitive strategies and children's outcome measures, teaching cognitive strategies was positively associated with children's performance and self-monitoring accuracy. However, teaching cognitive strategies did not predict effective restudy selections. Rather, child-centered instructions (i.e., giving children autonomy to regulate their own learning) positively predicted children's restudy, and further, children's self-monitoring was more accurate in classrooms where teachers more often used child-centered instructional practices. This seems to imply that not only the content of the instructions itself, but particularly the way these are given, affects children's metacognition.

Learning to recognize uncertainty vs. recognizing uncertainty to learn: Confidence judgments and exploration decisions in preschoolers

During exploration, young children often show an intuitive sensitivity to uncertainty, despite their strong tendency towards overconfidence in their explicit judgments. Here, we examine the development of children's explicit and implicit recognition of uncertainty using the same stimuli. We presented 4- and 5-year-olds with objects that varied in their amount of perceptual occlusion, and assessed their ability to distinguish among them using two types of measures. Experiment 1 used a traditional 3-point confidence scale to examine children's explicit uncertainty judgments. We compared these confidence judgments before and after they observed disconfirming evidence, to assess the impact of this experience on their acknowledgement of uncertainty in later trials. Experiment 2 examined children's exploration preference as a measure of implicit sensitivity to uncertainty. Our results indicate that children intuitively recognize gaps in their knowledge, and that this implicit recognition may be leveraged to support their explicit judgments. Specifically, we found that children's baseline confidence judgments improved significantly following the presentation of disconfirming evidence. Furthermore, when asked to make exploration decisions about the same set of objects, children showed a spontaneous sensitivity to uncertainty, prior to any evidence. Taken together, these results suggest that children's exploration behavior may be used as an early developing measure of uncertainty control and raise the intriguing possibility that the experience of unexpected outcomes may play a role in the development of metacognition.

The development of metacognitive accuracy in working memory across childhood

Growth in working memory capacity, the number of items kept active in mind, is thought to be an important aspect of childhood cognitive development. Here, we focused on participants' awareness of the contents of their working memory, or meta-working memory, which seems important because people can put cognitive abilities to best use only if they are aware of their limitations. In two experiments on the development of meta-working memory in children between 6 and 13 years old and adults, participants were to remember arrays of colored squares and to indicate if a probe item was in the array. On many trials, before the probe recognition test, they reported a metajudgment, how many items they thought they remembered. We compared meta-working memory judgments to actual performance and looked for associations between these measures on individual and trial-by-trial levels. Despite much lower working memory capacity in younger children there was little change in meta-working memory judgments across age groups. Consequently, younger participants were much less realistic in their metajudgments concerning their working memory capability. Higher cognitive capacity was associated with more accurate meta-working memory judgments within an age group. Trial-by-trial tuning of metajudgments was evident only in young adults and then only for small array set sizes. In sum, meta-working memory ability is a sophisticated skill that develops with age and may be an integral aspect of the development of working memory across the school years. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Developmental Differences in Subjective Recollection and Its Role in Decision Making

We examined how subjective assessments of recollection guide decision making. Subjective recollection was dissociated from accuracy during a forced-choice recognition task. Distracters were either similar to targets (match condition) or to other studied, but untested items (nonmatch condition). We assessed 223 participants (112 males) across three experiments (137 White, 37 Asian-American, 7 African-American, 4 American-Indian, 32 mixed race, 6 undisclosed). In Experiment 1, 6- to 10-year-olds and adults (N = 119) were less accurate (d = 0.70), but more likely to claim subjective recollection and make memory selections in anticipation of a reward in the nonmatch condition (ds = 0.64-0.70). This pattern was eliminated in 6- to 7-year-olds when we limited the number of selections (Experiment 2, N = 52), but was replicated when we required the selections to be counted (Experiment 3, N = 52), underscoring the effects of decision complexity on children's self-reflections.

Children's exploratory play tracks the discriminability of hypotheses

Effective curiosity-driven learning requires recognizing that the value of evidence for testing hypotheses depends on what other hypotheses are under consideration. Do we intuitively represent the discriminability of hypotheses? Here we show children alternative hypotheses for the contents of a box and then shake the box (or allow children to shake it themselves) so they can hear the sound of the contents. We find that children are able to compare the evidence they hear with imagined evidence they do not hear but might have heard under alternative hypotheses. Children (N = 160; mean: 5 years and 4 months) prefer easier discriminations (Experiments 1-3) and explore longer given harder ones (Experiments 4-7). Across 16 contrasts, children's exploration time quantitatively tracks the discriminability of heard evidence from an unheard alternative. The results are consistent with the idea that children have an "intuitive psychophysics": children represent their own perceptual abilities and explore longer when hypotheses are harder to distinguish.

The Relationship Between Confidence and Conformity in a Non-routine Counting Task With Young Children: Dedicated to the Memory of Purificación Rodríguez

Counting is a complex cognitive process that is paramount to arithmetical development at school. The improvement of counting skills of children depends on their understanding of the logical and conventional rules involved. While the logical rules are mandatory and related to one-to-one correspondence, stable order, and cardinal principles, conventional rules are optional and associated with social customs. This study contributes to unravel the conceptual understanding of counting rules of children. It explores, with a developmental approach, the performance of children on non-routine counting detection tasks, their confidence in their answers (metacognitive monitoring skills), and their ability to change a wrong answer by deferring to the opinion of a unanimous majority who justified or did not justify their claims. Hundred and forty nine children aged from 5 to 8 years were randomized to one of the experimental conditions of the testimony of teachers: with (n = 74) or without justification (n = 75). Participants judged the correctness of different types of counting procedures presented by a computerized detection task, such as (a) pseudoerrors that are correct counts where conventional rules are violated (e.g., first counting six footballs, followed by other six basketballs that were interspersed along the row), and (b) compensation errors that are incorrect counts where logical rules were broken twice (e.g., skipping the third element of the row and then labeling the sixth element with two number words, 5 and 6). Afterwards, children rated their confidence in their detection answer with a 5-point scale. Subsequently, they listened to the testimony of the teachers and showed either conformity or non-conformity. The participants considered both compensation errors and pseudoerrors as incorrect counts in the detection task. The analysis of the confidence of children in their responses suggested that they were not sensitive to their incorrect performance. Finally, children tended to conform more often after hearing a justification of the testimony than after hearing only the testimonies of the teachers. It can be concluded that the age range of the evaluated children failed to recognize the optional nature of conventional counting rules and were unaware of their misconceptions. Nevertheless, the reasoned justifications of the testimony, offered by a unanimous majority, promoted considerable improvement in the tendency of the children to revise those misconceptions.

Comparing metacognitive monitoring between native and non-native speaking primary school students

Metacognitive monitoring is a significant predictor of academic achievement and is assumed to be related to language competencies. Hence, it may explain academic performance differences between native and non-native speaking students. We compared metacognitive monitoring (in terms of resolution) between native and non-native speaking fourth graders (~ 10 year olds) in two studies. In Study 1, we matched 30 native and 30 non-native speakers and assessed their monitoring in the context of a paired-associates task, including a recognition test and confidence judgements. Study 1 revealed that recognition and monitoring did not differ between native and non-native speaking children. In Study 2, we matched 36 native and 36 non-native speakers and assessed their monitoring with the same paired-associates task. Additionally, we included a text comprehension task with open-ended questions and confidence judgments. We replicated the findings of Study 1, suggesting that recognition and monitoring do not necessarily differ between native and non-native speakers. However, native speaking students answered more open-ended questions correctly than non-native speaking students did. Nevertheless, the two groups did not differ in monitoring their answers to open-ended questions. Our results indicate that native and non-native speaking children may monitor their metacognitive resolution equally, independent of task performance and characteristics. In conclusion, metacognitive monitoring deficits may not be the primary source of the academic performance differences between native and non-native speaking students.

"I'll remember everything no matter what!": The role of metacognitive abilities in the development of young children's prospective memory

Prospective memory (PM), the ability to remember to carry out future intentions, is a critical skill for children's daily activities. Despite this, little is known about young children's awareness of their PM ability (metamemory), how metamemory is affected by PM task difficulty, and how metacognitive abilities might be related to metamemory. The current study examined the effect of task difficulty on children's PM predictions, actual performance, and postdictions and relations among episodic memory metamemory, metacognitive control, and executive functioning. Children aged 4 to 6 years (N = 131) made PM predictions, completed an easy or difficult PM task, and then made PM postdictions. Children also made predictions and postdictions for their performance on an episodic recall task and then completed an independent measure of metacognitive control and two measures of executive function (working memory and inhibition). Results showed that (a) children's PM increased with age and was worse in the difficult PM task condition, (b) PM predictions and postdictions did not increase with age and only PM postdictions were affected by PM task difficulty; (c) children's PM and episodic recall predictions and postdictions were more accurate with age, (d) children's PM postdictions best predicted PM performance, whereas predictions best predicted episodic recall task performance, and (e) children with better metacognitive control had better PM and more accurate PM predictions. These results are discussed in terms of young children's optimism surrounding their memory performance and the emergence of early metacognitive abilities.

Developmental Improvements and Persisting Difficulties in Children's Metacognitive Monitoring and Control Skills: Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Perspectives

This study investigated age‐dependent improvements of monitoring and control in 7/8‐ and 9/10‐year‐old children. We addressed prospective (judgments of learning and restudy selections) and retrospective metacognitive skills (confidence judgments and withdrawal of answers). Children (N = 305) completed a paired‐associate learning task twice, with a 1‐year delay. Results revealed improvements in retrospective, but not in prospective monitoring and control. Furthermore, control remained suboptimal, seemingly a consequence of overoptimistic monitoring. Both age groups showed stronger monitoring‐based control at the second compared to the first assessment. The comparison with a cross‐sectional sample (N = 144) revealed that improvements in retrospective monitoring can be mainly attributed to naturally occurring development, whereas retrospective control seemed to improve due to increased task familiarity.

Anchoring Effect of Performance Feedback on Accuracy of Metacognitive Monitoring in Preschool Children

Preschool children are generally inaccurate at evaluating past and predicting future performance. The present study examines the effect of performance feedback on the accuracy of preschoolers' predictive judgments and tests whether performance feedback acts as an anchor for postdictive judgments. In Experiment 1, preschool children (n = 40) solved number patterns, and in Experiment 2 they solved object patterns (n = 59). The results in both experiments revealed, firstly, that children receiving performance feedback made more accurate predictive judgments and lowered their certainty after their incorrect answer. Secondly, the children relied on performance feedback more than on actual task experience when making postdictive judgments, indicating that performance feedback was used as an anchor for subsequent postdictive judgments.

Feasibility and potential benefits of an attention and executive function intervention on metacognition in a mixed pediatric sample

The term "metacognition" describes thinking about a cognitive phenomenon or, more simply put, thinking about thinking . Metacognition involves using knowledge about one's cognitive processes to change behavior, including monitoring and controlling cognition. Metacognition is vital for learning and is often more difficult for children with neurodevelopmental concerns (e.g. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder [ADHD], Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder [FASD], Autism Spectrum Disorders [ASD]), possibly due to underlying deficits in attention and executive functioning (EF). The present study evaluated a 6- to 8-week cognitive intervention aimed at improving attention and EF and children's metacognitive abilities. Participants included a mixed sample of 50 children ages 6-12 years presenting with attention and/or EF deficits. Children within the active intervention group completed a game-based attention/EF intervention called Caribbean Quest (CQ), which combines process-specific and compensatory approaches to remediate attention and EF. Educational Assistants (EAs) supported children during gameplay by teaching explicit metacognitive strategies. Pre/post assessments included measures of attention and working memory (WM), metacognitive awareness (child, parent, and EA questionnaires), and metacognitive regulation (metacognitive monitoring and control). Results indicated post-intervention gains in WM, metacognitive awareness, and metacognitive regulation (self-monitoring and metacognitive control). These results provide preliminary support for CQ as potentially beneficial in improving aspects of EF and metacognition in children.

Development of Children's monitoring and control when learning from texts: effects of age and test format

This study investigated elementary school children's development of monitoring and control when learning from texts. Second (N = 138) and fourth (N = 164) graders were tested in the middle (T₁) and end (T₂) of the school year. The study focused on the cross-sectional and longitudinal development of monitoring and control, and aimed to investigate the development of metacognition for two test formats. After reading expository texts, children completed a comprehension test consisting of open-ended and true-false questions. They monitored their test performance by making confidence judgments, and controlled performance by deciding whether to maintain or withdraw their given answers. Overall, monitoring and control accuracy was higher for open-ended questions than for true-false questions. For open-ended questions, results indicated higher metacognitive accuracy for fourth graders than second graders. No such age effects were found for monitoring and control for true-false questions. Longitudinally, children of both age groups improved their monitoring and control accuracy from T₁ to T₂, for open-ended and true-false questions. For both test types, improvement mainly occurred for the monitoring and controlling of incorrect, rather than correct answers. Additionally, the results indicated inter-individual stability of performance, but no stability of monitoring and control accuracy over time. The findings indicate that developmental as well as task-related factors affect children's metacognitive accuracy.

Encouraging performance monitoring promotes proactive control in children

Monitoring progression towards one's goals is essential for efficient cognitive control. Immature performance monitoring may contribute to suboptimal cognitive control engagement in childhood, potentially explaining why children engage control reactively even when proactive control would be more effective. This study investigated whether encouraging children to actively monitor their performance results in more mature control engagement. Electroencephalography data were collected while children and adults performed a flanker task in three conditions in which they were provided no feedback, standard feedback, or were asked to estimate their own feedback. Both age groups accurately estimated their own feedback. Critically, feedback estimation promoted online performance monitoring and proactive engagement of attention and inhibition during the flanker period in children. These findings indicate that proactive control engagement in childhood can be effectively supported by encouraging performance monitoring.

Memory enhancements from active control of learning emerge across development

This paper investigates whether active control of study leads to enhanced learning in 5- to 11-year-old children. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants played a simple memory game with the instruction to try to remember and later recognize a set of 64 objects. In Experiment 3, the goal was to learn the French names for the same objects. For half of the materials presented, participants could decide the order and pacing of study (Active condition). For the other half, they passively observed the study decisions of a previous participant (Yoked condition). Recognition memory was more accurate for objects studied in the active as compared to the yoked condition. However, the active learning advantage was relatively small among 5-year-olds and increased with age, becoming comparable to adults' by age 8. Our results show that the ability to actively control study develops during early childhood and results in memory benefits that last over a week-long delay. We discuss possible interpretations for the observed developmental change, as well as the implications of these results for educational implementations.

Components of metacognition can function independently across development

It is often argued that metacognition includes 2 components: monitoring and control. However, it is unclear whether these components can operate independently, or whether they always operate as part of a hierarchy. The current study attempts to address this issue. In Experiment 1 (N = 90), age-related differences were assessed to examine the developmental trajectories of monitoring and control in 5- and 7-year-old children and adults. In Experiment 2 (N = 90) and Experiment 3 (N = 90), a scaffolding approach was taken with the same age groups to investigate correspondences in intervention-related changes in monitoring and control. Several dissociations between monitoring and control were found: In Experiment 2, strategy instruction affected metacognitive control, but not metacognitive monitoring, whereas in Experiment 3, performance feedback affected metacognitive monitoring, but not metacognitive control. These findings suggest that the monitoring and control components of metacognition can operate independently, challenging simple feed-forward models of metacognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Here is a hint! How children integrate reliable recommendations in their memory decisions

Children's own memory is not the only reliable source of information about past events. Others may possess relevant knowledge, and children must learn to appropriately consider it in combination with their own memories. In the current study, we investigated 5-, 7-, and 9-year-olds' (N = 72) ability to incorporate probabilistically reliable (70% accurate) hints into their memory decisions. Results revealed that children across ages were appropriately sensitive to these cues without following them blindly and indiscriminately. Furthermore, individual differences in metamemory monitoring predicted overall accuracy improvements after receiving cues in 9-year-olds but not in 5- and 7-year-olds, revealing a developmental role of metamemory for discerning when cues are most informative or needed. Although 5-year-olds increased overall confidence in their memory after receiving invalid cues, they still preserved the capacity to monitor their memory in the face of inaccurate information. Overall, children were sensitive to reliable recommendations, but developing metacognitive mechanisms predicted judicious benefits from cues.

A (Preliminary) Recipe for Obtaining a Testing Effect in Preschool Children: Two Critical Ingredients

The testing effect refers to the finding that retrieval of previously learned information improves retention of that information more than restudy practice does. While there is some evidence that the testing effect can already arise in preschool children when a particular experimental task is employed, it remains unclear whether, for this age group, the effect exists across a wider range of tasks. To examine the issue, the present experiments sought to determine the potential roles of retrieval-practice and final-test formats, and of immediate feedback during retrieval practice for the testing effect in preschoolers. Experiments 1 and 2 showed no testing effect in preschoolers when a free-recall task was applied during the final test, regardless of whether free recall (Experiment 1) or cued recall (Experiment 2) were conducted during retrieval practice. In contrast, if cued-recall tasks were used during both retrieval practice and the final test (Experiment 3), a reliable testing effect arose. Furthermore, the magnitude of the effect was dramatically enhanced when, in addition, immediate feedback was provided during retrieval practice (Experiment 4). The present findings suggest that cued-recall practice and test formats, as well as immediate feedback during practice, are crucial ingredients for obtaining the testing effect in preschoolers.

Relationship between phonological working memory, metacognitive skills and reading comprehension in children with learning disabilities

PURPOSE

Reading requires the activation of several cognitive processes, some of which are basic, e.g. recognizing letters and words, whereas others are complex, such as working memory and ability to think about one's own learning strategies. One condition for fulfilling a complex cognitive task, such as understanding a text, is the ability to maintain and process information, which depends on working memory.

OBJECTIVE

To analyze the ability of using metacognitive strategies for reading, the phonological working memory of school children with learning disabilities, and also determine if there is relation between these skills and reading comprehension.

METHOD

The sample consisted of 30 school-age children and teenagers of both genders, aged 8 to 12 years, who were enrolled in primary school. They were divided in two groups, experimental (EG) and control (CG). All children were subjected to evaluation of reading comprehension, phonological working memory, and use of metacognitive skills for reading. The results were compared between groups through the Mann-Whitney test, and correlation between variables was analyzed through Spearman correlation test.

RESULT

Statistical comparison between EG and CG showed statistically significant difference. Positive and effective correlation was observed between reading comprehension, phonological working memory and metacognitive tests.

CONCLUSION

children with learning disabilities presented deficits in phonological working memory and use of metacognitive strategies. The positive and effective correlation between the abilities analyzed suggests that failure in the phonological working memory and use of metacognitive strategies interfere with reading comprehension.

Adaptive control and the avoidance of cognitive control demands across development

Young adults adaptively coordinate their behavior to avoid demands placed on cognitive control. We investigated how this adaptive coordination develops by having 6-7- and 11-12-year-olds and young adults complete a demand selection task, in which participants could select between two tasks that varied in cognitive control demands via differences in rule switch frequency. Adults and older children exhibited significant preference for selecting the less demanding task, as well as a metacognitive signal guiding adaptive demand avoidance behavior across a variety of behavioral and self-report assessments. In contrast, despite evidence of differential demands on cognitive control, younger children did not coordinate their task selections to avoid higher demand. Together, these findings suggest that sensitivity and adaptive responses to control demands emerge with development and are consistent with gradual development of lateral prefrontal cortex, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, and their functional connectivity, which support effort avoidance in adults.

Children’s Allocation of Study Time during the Solution of Raven’s Progressive Matrices

The acuity of reasoning on Raven’s Progressive Matrices is strongly influenced by strategic determinants. Building on metamemory studies that highlight the influence of study-time allocation on memory development, we investigated children’s allocation of study time while solving these matrices. A total of 170 children aged 6–12 years completed a computerized short-form version of the standard matrices featuring items selected to represent a broad range of difficulties. Beyond analyzing changes in mean latencies and performances with age, we used generalized additive mixed models to explore within-participant variability in response times as a function of both item complexity and overall individual efficiency. Results revealed that individual differences in performances were significantly associated with children’s adaptive modulation of response times. Mediation analysis further indicated that response-time modulation contributed to age-related changes in performance. Taking account of study-time allocation in reasoning tasks may open up new avenues for the study of reasoning development and the assessment of intellectual functioning.

Why are children overconfident? Developmental differences in the implementation of accessibility cues when judging concept learning

Children are often overconfident when monitoring their learning, which is harmful for effective control and learning. The current study investigated children's (N=167, age range 7-12years) judgments of learning (JOLs) when studying difficult concepts. The main aims were (a) to investigate how JOL accuracy is affected by accessibility cues and (b) to investigate developmental changes in implementing accessibility cues in JOLs. After studying different concepts, children were asked to generate novel sentences and then to make JOLs, select concepts for restudy, and take a final test. Overconfidence for incorrect and incomplete test responses was reduced for older children in comparison with younger children. For older age groups, generating a sentence led to greater overconfidence compared with not being able to generate a sentence, which indicates that older children relied more on accessibility cues when making JOLs. This pattern differed in the youngest age group; younger children were generally overconfident regardless of whether they had generated sentences or not. Overconfidence was disadvantageous for effective control of learning for all age groups. These findings imply that instructions to encourage children to avoid metacognitive illusions need to be adapted to children's developmental stage.